Amazon MP3 store to go international

Amazon.com plans to start selling MP3 music files over its international sites this year, the company said on Sunday.

By
Sumner Lemon
| 28 Jan 08

Amazon.com will start selling MP3 music files through its international sites this year, the company said on Sunday. But details of the company's plans to expand its digital music service remain scarce.

"We have received thousands of emails from Amazon customers around the world asking us when we will make Amazon MP3 available outside of the US," Bill Carr, Amazon's vice-president of digital music, in a statement.

Amazon began selling MP3 files without digital rights management technology on its US site in September 2007, at prices ranging from $0.89 to $0.99 per song, and $5.99 to $9.99 per album. The company's catalogue includes 3.3 million songs from 270,000 artists, it said.

Details of Amazon's plans to expand sales of MP3 into markets outside the US remain unclear. The company did not say when this year it would start selling MP3 music files outside of the US, and did not specify whether the service would be available in all countries where Amazon operates.

Besides the US, Amazon has online stores in the UK, Germany, Japan, France, Canada, and China.